the sheltiechick blog

Auggie’s Pee Saga Continues

This morning I let the boys out to pee. Auggie squatted to pee, then almost immediately decided he would rather bark at my mom moving cars in the driveway instead. “Auggie, you still have to pee,” I told him, and sent him back out into the yard. He came back on the deck and barked in my face instead. So we came inside for breakfast. I sent him back out after eating and all he did was poop. Fine, it’s YOUR problem if you don’t want to pee.

Except it wasn’t exactly like that, as I would find out later.

When I came home for lunch and let him out, he squatted, then did the little “Imma wag my tail while squatting” thing which he first did when he had his UTI last year. He has since done this a few times, causing me to freak out and immediately get a urine sample to the vet only for it to come up clear. It still makes me pay more attention, but doesn’t cause immediate worry like it used to. I do know when he is wagging his tail, he’s not peeing yet, and it’s not until he stops wagging his tail (or just moves and tries a new location) that he actually pees. So he moved and squatted again.
And then I realized it didn’t look like he was ACTUALLY peeing.
I told him to try again, so he picked another spot – and this time I was watching closely – squatted… no pee. After a little bit a few dribbles came out, but no real pee.

I went inside and called the vet. Doc was at lunch but they would call me back as soon as he came back to the office and let me know what they wanted to do. I took Auggie back outside and asked him to pee again. He tried a few more times but each time nothing came out. I could tell he obviously HAD to go – for one thing, he gets his food floated in about a cup of water, so I knew there was pee in his bladder – but nothing was coming out. Not. good.

Auggie came back to work with me while I waited to hear back from my vet, then off we went rather quickly to be worked into the schedule.

Doc couldn’t feel anything obvious, but as I expected, an x-ray was first up to make sure there weren’t any stones floating around, even if he couldn’t feel anything. Away the little pup went for his x-ray, then came back looking smug. I wondered if he had peed all over their x-ray equipment, but no, he had just been a very good boy for his x-rays. Doc came in with the x-rays after a few minutes and… nothing. Nothing on the x-ray at all. So away Auggie went again, this time to have a catheter run. Doc warned me they might have to sedate him a little to get the cath in, which, if you remember from Auggie’s last annual, he has developed a heart murmur, so that gave me some anxiety. Back in they come, Auggie looking EXCEPTIONALLY smug now and not woozy at all. They hadn’t had to sedate him, he was very good, he had peed AROUND the cath even. So they had collected a urine sample and were running it, but visually, there wasn’t a lot of blood or anything. It could come back with a bladder infection, but it could also be clear, and if it was clear, we were out of ideas as to what was up.

At this point I seriously started to think my dog was trolling me. Especially as he sat on the floor looking at Doc and Doc gave him some cookies. Auggie, we have cookies at HOME, okay? And they’re a lot cheaper. You don’t need to fake me out just to come get cookies from Doc. That is ridiculous.

So after the urinalysis was finished, Doc came in and said “Good news!”
“He has a bladder infection?” I asked. In what world, exactly, is it good news that your dog has a bladder infection? In my world, where money is tight, and cute little dogs are threatened with a horrible death when they go to the vet and run up bills for no good reason.
“Yep! Lots of white blood cells and bacteria in there.”
“Whoo-hoo! Auggie, you get to live after all!”
(I am, of course, joking. I was trying to fight off a panic attack and trying very hard NOT to cry this afternoon when I realized we had a problem. I love my Auggie doggie even though he may be the biggest snotbucket in the world.)

We came home with antibiotics and some anti-inflammatory too, since he is likely pretty sore and inflamed to not have been peeing. Poor baby dog! Hopefully he will get to feeling better in a few days here. We’ll go back next week and run another urinalysis to make sure we’re in the clear. I sure hope so. I don’t want the poor thing locked into another cycle of urinalysis after urinalysis and I definitely don’t want any stones developing from this infection like we had last year. So hopefully this chapter in Auggie’s Pee Saga will be a short one!


Pool time

First, a handful of pictures from yesterday…


Auggie still takes better posed shots than Payton LOL. He’s such a supermodel.


A dur durr?

Then we got out the pool. I bought these at Target last week… pool Weebles. They wobble but they won’t sink. I thought they would be fun.

Payton says OMG THEY ARE WOBBLING


Georgie isn’t sure what to think…


Payton says “I bite?”


Every time he would go to grab one it would bob into the water. He had no idea how to deal with this hahaha.


Why does it keep running away??


I’ll just hop into the pool…


Payton is my pool puppy. He likes it. He’ll go run laps and then hop in the pool, go run laps, hop in the pool. No big deal.


Dribbles. Nice.


What? Who’s being gross?


I want to get this ducky.


Look who else is in the pool!!


Auggie hates the pool but yesterday I grabbed some treats and a clicker and taught him “get in the pool.” He did this on his own today… he walked up and kept looking in the pool and thinking about it, and finally, he climbed in. It’s just so HOT.


Hmm, it’s much cooler in here.


And all I have to do is lean over and get a drinky.


I’m not really sure what the big deal is actually.


I quite like it actually now that I’m in here.


Aaaaaahhhhh Auggie <3 <3
Somehow Payton splashed around so much he got his eyebrow wet. But only ONE eyebrow. WTF Payton.


LMAO we were trying to clicker Georgie into the pool too. She wasn’t doing it for treats though, we finally had to get out frozen green beans. Auggie also loves frozen green beans. Trying to give the green bean JUST to Georgie was funny LOL. Her face, and Auggie’s, hahahahaha.


Auggie’s face again LOL. I love how Payton’s like “mine?”


Happy Auggie!!


Payton will even sit in the pool LOL. “The water is cold on mah balls. I likes it.” Weird dog.


My Auggie <3 I'm so proud of him for getting in the pool all on his own today. I think he's going to get in it a lot more this year, so hopefully he'll be able to keep cool!!


Guess who’s having a birthday?


What’s a birthday??


Is THIS a birthday?


I think I like birthdays.


OMG… I think my birthday is gone already.


Auggie got his piece of cupcake on the deck instead of on the table, LOL. Poor Auggie. But it’s not your birthday.


Is there more birthday?


Mommy… I want more birthday. Make more birthday.


OMG Auggie I seriously cannot stop laughing at this picture. Like I’m in tears every time I see it.


Auggie: Birthdays are super fun!! I LIKE CAKE.
Payton: You smell like birthday.


Payton: No, seriously. I think you have some birthday in your mouth.


I think this may be the best photo I’ve ever taken. Ever.


Payton: I think you stashed some of my birthday here.


Payton: Mmmmm… brothers are delicious and taste like birthday.

I was waiting for Auggie to be like “I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU TRYING TO GET ALL THE CAKE OUT OF MY MANE” and kick his butt, but it never happened. Birthdays put everybody in a good mood I guess! They wanted to stay outside and look for crumbs when I ate my lunch, and when I came outside later, Auggie’s mane was all drooled on from Payton licking and trying to get crumbs and frosting off him.

Later Payton will get his presents, but I just happened to have his cake now, so I gave him that already. Also Georgie wouldn’t behave (read: wouldn’t sit still and wear the hat) so she didn’t get any cake. >=| NO BIRTHDAY HAT, NO BIRTHDAY CAKE.


Stupid dog tricks

My sister came over yesterday to spend Mother’s Day with our mom. While sitting in the backyard watching Auggie chase bubbles, she said, “Why do you have that car??”


Because this.

She and my BIL have adopted a puppy who is due to come home Memorial Day weekend. Collie/lab/aussie/maybe some other stuff mix, nobody is really sure. I told her she should bring her puppy over and do this. Because that is what I bought it for.


And this. Payton… drivin’ the Little Tikes car like a boss.

Also I took Payton to PetSmart Saturday so he could try on some beds, see if we could find one that fits him. No beds we liked, but Payton requested a tennis ball on a ropey bone (seriously, I offered it to him and he jumped up and grabbed it to tug, so I put it in my basket. I kept holding out other toys to him later, and he’d just kind of look at it, then be like “I like the one we already have in the basket. *looks in the basket at boney ball.* <3 oh boney ball <3 <3") Anyway, at the register the girl asked how old Payton was and then asked me where we do our training. "Oh, uh, I train him myself," I said, kind of offhand, because it's always just kinda awkward to get into a conversation in there about how I'm a trainer at a training facility the next town over. And then I got the patronizing "oh right, you train yourself. Right. Idiot." look. I think I prefer the awkward conversations about me being a trainer the next town over. So then I came home and taught my dogs to do this.


I’m SUPER proud of Payton. It only took a few minutes. Auggie I knew would get it almost right away, he’s the rockstar. But Payton has never been taught to get UP on something like this and pretty quickly he offered climbing up on it for me. Yay Payton!!

Then we put the dogs IN the bucket.

Payton thinks it’s hi-laaaaarious. Auggie remembers the days of being an only dog.


OMG.


Poor Georgie LOL. And poor Payton. He looks HUGE.


Just Georgie and Uncle Auggie. Auggie still remembers the days of being an only dog.


Then we couldn’t get Auggie to jump out of the bucket LOL. He was like “no, I’m just going to stay here, and remember what it was like when I was the one getting ALL the cookies…”


A small handful of recent pics

Now that I have FTP access again rather than just crappy flickr, let’s try to get caught up! I have quite a bit to get caught up on (a bunch of pro pics from Louisville) but so far I’m just using a web client and haven’t got the actual FTP client to cooperate with me yet, so here’s just a small handful to get us started…

First: I ran a half marathon April 28th. On April 29th, I was stupidly entered in the local agility trial. LOLOLOL I woke up going “WTF WAS I THINKING?” and hobbling around my kitchen throwing down a handful of Ibuprofen. The weather is notorious for being crappy at our local trial, and this year was no exception. It started pouring just in time for our first run and didn’t let up until long after we had gone home.

Auggie was not very excited to be stuck in the car while it rained outside. I was not excited when I went inside the building to go pee and realized my legs were both completely blue and purple. I went home right after our second run and got straight into a hot bath. Yikes!

And of course because I am an over ambitious idiot, I also entered in a trial the following weekend, too. (and also would have stupidly done one this weekend were it not for Mother’s Day!) Got in the car Friday night to leave and discovered my A/C wasn’t working – I only ever use it when I have dogs in the car to keep cool. NOT happy, and my dad had no freon to put in it. Auggie is now crated in a VariKennel, which I call his clamshell, since he ate his way out of one of the soft crates down at Louisville, and I was really worried about him being stuck in a hot plastic clamshell. I got our crate fans out and put one on his door, and unzipped the top of Payton’s soft crate a bit so he would get more air flow, and wedged the second crate fan best I could against the “door” to his soft crate.
I forgot to zip the top of Payton’s crate closed when I left the dogs in the hotel to go grab dinner and was quite surprised when I opened my hotel room door and TA-DAAAA! PAYTON!

He had stuck his nose into the small opening and wedged, wedged, wedged his head through until he opened it enough to squeeze his whole body out. =P

Next, things you never want to see in your rear view mirror:

PAYTON.
I did not learn from the hotel incident. Payton, however, did. It was over 90 degrees when I was heading home so I again opened the top of the crate to give Payton more air flow. About thirty miles away from the trial site, I suddenly see PAYTON’S STUPID HEAD in my rear view mirror.
I drove like this for 18 miles until I got to the next exit and pulled off. Though on the actual highway he had his head up towards the crack in the window like “Ahhhh fresh air!” I ended up just taking him out of the crate and letting him loose in the backseat, which I hated, but was terrified he would overheat or would end up like THIS again, which certainly isn’t safe either.

And then some random miscellaneous shots…

Family shot. At least they’re both not looking at me…?


There we go!


PAYTONGATOR


The holee roller is his fave. Unfortunately we’ve tugged on it so much it’s ready to rip. =< I'm trying to be gentle with it but I don't think it's going to last the summer. and finally,
my big ol’ baby dog.